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Factors That Influence Competitor Social Media Strategy

Competition is omniscient in every business. Irrespective of the business you do, whether online or physical, you need to face and survive competition. Business owners and their marketing executives implement a number of strategies to beat the competition on the social front. However, when you are comparing your social media strategies with those of your competitors, you must pay special attention to certain factors. Whilst there are a number of elements present on the social media front, some need special attention whereas others may be ignored. In this article, we will look at the important social media factors that must be considered while comparing competitor’s social media strategy with that of yours.

Social Media Platforms Used by your Competitors:

By analyzing the social media platforms used by your competitors, you can speed up your social media efforts by using those platforms which are not being utilized by your rivals. Apart from Twitter and FaceBook, there are a number of social media platforms including Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn. By spreading across a number of social media platforms, you can reach the audience, which is not exposed to your competitor business. Some social media platforms allow small businesses to share different forms of content including text, audio, and video. Some platforms also have sharing capabilities that help you expand your audience reach.

Audience Engagement by Competitor:

Instead of looking at the number of followers, fans, lines, retweets, you competitor’s posts’ get, it is better to look at the engagement rate. Even if you have less fans and have got a higher engagement rate then that is something you must be happy for as it implies that you are reaching your target audience. Facebook offers a competitive analysis tool which can help you get good judgment about your engagement rate.

Type of Content Posted By Competitor:

Analyzing the kind of content posted by competitors, you can get clues on what content you must post. Content that gets more response or audience engagement should be emphasized upon. Compare this with the content you post and audience engagement you receive. It will also give an idea whether you should post more text content or video content.

Social Media Strategies Implemented by Competitors:

Observe the strategies implemented by your competitors to increase the engagement rate. If your rivals are giving away any free gifts, then you can go ahead and organize a quiz contest or a declaration that 50 percent of the day proceeds to go for charity. Analyzing the social media strategies implemented by your competitors can help you either steer down your social media efforts or push them up.

Competitor’s Interaction with Their Fans and Followers:

One of the important factors to be considered on social media platform is how a business interacts with the audience. Identify the ‘voice’ your competitors use to crack up their customers. Do they use a casual tone or are they more diplomatic in their communications? All these things can help you identify the strategies that you should use.

Posts by the Company:

It is very important to know on whose name company is posting. Most companies post on the name of the brand. However, it is their CEO’s who are posting. This makes interaction with customers personal and authentic.

Frequency of Interactions or Posts:

By comparing how often your competitors post content with that of yours, you can judge the impact this has on audience engagement. Posting too often may frustrate the audience. While posting infrequently may wipe away your brand name from the customer’s mind. If your competitor is posting more content than your business, then it is possible that their audience engagement levels are high.

Growth in Audience and Engagement Levels:

Growth is a crucial factor which must be paid attention to. Monitor their growth for a period of three months and find out how and why they are achieving the growth. Growth is also an indicator of success of competitor’s strategies. If you have less followers than your rival, but your growth is more than theirs, then you need not make any changes in your social media efforts.

Promotional Content:

You should observe the discreet promotion done by your rivals through link placement in their posts or tweets. You should also examine their calls to action, how often they use promotional content, and the type of response received.

Paid media efforts:

While it is quite impossible to find out the number of rivals utilized paid social media marketing strategies, you can still some paid ads on Facebook and Twitter. Observer their trend of sponsored ads and gain knowledge about their paid efforts can help you determine the funds you need to keep aside for paid marketing.

In conclusion, it can be said that analyzing and comparing your social media efforts with that of your competitors, you can find out their loopholes and use this knowledge to your advantage. You can identify the areas where you need to improve and keep up with your rivals in the social media world. While analyzing your rival’s strategies, you are also analyzing the efforts made by your business.

About Author:

Article is written by Michael Waugh, Internet Marketing manager at Potenza Global Solutions. PGS is a leading magento development company offers complete magento web solutions.